We’re No. 28!

At No. 28, the U.S. doesn’t rank so well in a global matchup of environmental performance to be released Thursday in Davos, Switzerland at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum.

The Pilot 2006 Environmental Performance Index is a tool intended to be a policy guide aimed at protecting human health and the natural world. It measures performance on 16 indicators that fall into six policy categories: environmental health, air quality, water resources, biodiversity and habitat, productive natural resources, and sustainable energy.

The index was prepared by Yale’s Center for Environmental Law & Policy and Columbia’s Center for International Earth Science Information Network.

The U.S. gets dinged in a number of areas — most harshly for ozone emissions, overfishing, too much subsidy of the agricultural industry, wilderness protection and the amount of energy that comes from renewable sources, such as wind and solar. The nation gets gold stars for the rate of timber harvest, indoor air pollution, drinking water quality and sanitation. Details on the U.S. score can be found in the appendix showing assessments by nation (the U.S. is on p. 130 by PDF count).

New Zealand, Sweden and Finland round out the top three in the ranking, while Canada lands in the eighth spot and Mexico is 66th. Mauritania, Chad and Niger rank at the bottom of the 133-nation index.